04 June 2012 3:21 PM

Loss and Gain, Past and Present, and who talked of a Golden Age?

Back at my desk (I wasn’t that far away – funny that when I go on assignment readers always assume I’m on holiday, whereas when I go on holiday they assume I’m on assignment) I thought it was time for some conversation with readers. But before I forget, those who were interested in my reflections on Philip Larkin can find my review of the new Collected Poems in the American conservative magazine ‘National Review’ here.

I’d like to address some readers who told me that the early 1950s in Britain were not some sort of ‘Golden Age’. Well, let the record show that I have never said that they were. Not only that. I have repeatedly said that I have no such view. The past is in any case gone and irrecoverable. Even if we wished to return to it, we could not. We study it carefully, so as to understand our own times better, and also to avoid choosing – as our parents and grandparents did – the wrong future.

We also have the tedious allegation that people have always complained that the past was better than the present. Well a) that is not what I am saying and b) I don’t believe this is true of all times and c) what if, on some occasions, they are right to mourn the loss of good things in the past? Does that mean that their complaints are invalidated because others have mistakenly done so at other times? This is not serious debate. And grown-up people should steer clear of it.

So a belief in a ‘Golden Age’, and a desire to return to such an age, are not the argument. The argument is about whether we have lost anything valuable, and if so, whether we could then by thought and care have preserved it, and whether we might now or in the future, by thought and care, restore or recover it. And I would be pleased, if, *just for once*, one of these braying, repetitive and thoughtless critics actually responded rationally to the reply I shall now give.

I was born in 1951 and so of course did not directly experience the Coronation. I was in my pram at the time. Careful readers will have noted that I was referring not to my own experience but to the film of the Coronation which has just been reissued as a DVD. Like so many such films (I believe there’s a positive treasury of evocative footage of the era on the British Council website) it shows glimpses of a Britain now as vanished as the lost city of Atlantis. These glimpses are brief (they weren’t the purpose of the film) but they are very evocative for me as, when I did grow conscious of my surroundings, the people, cityscape and countryside of my youth were rather similar. The sight of that Britain preserved on colour film awakes many memories.

This particular Britain did not die in one night, but vanished slowly and in part. It survived in many ways until the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Traces of it could be found in a few remote corners much later than that. I tend to think its death was marked by a series of apparently unconnected events – Winston Churchill’s funeral, the final disappearance of steam railway locomotives, the abolition of the old coinage, the burning off of the old town gas in great braziers in the streets at around the same time, and the feeling of despond and darkness that came after the Yom Kippur War and Ted Heath’s Three Day Week. Not coincidentally, the country was taking the Brussels yoke at the same time, ceding its sovereignty to what would become the EU.

What was different? Well, my book ‘the Abolition of Britain’ mentions many of these things, really a matter of the ways in which people thought and behaved, rather than measurable in material possessions and material living standards.

Even a book wasn’t really long enough to explain all the things which had changed, nor the how, nor the why, though I do recommend it to anyone who is interested. It is not the book my enemies have claimed it to be. So my article, with only a little space, sought to summarise them thus : “In 1953, criminals were afraid of the police, school pupils were under the thumb of teachers, couples stayed married till they died, we made the most of the things we used, hardly anyone lived off the State, our Parliament and courts made and maintained our laws, poor people were thin rather than fat, and the strongest drug around was aspirin. What is more, we loved our country and respected its traditions, laws and institutions.

Every educated person would have known the words that open the Coronation film, John of Gaunt’s dying speech from Shakespeare’s Richard II which ends ‘. . . this earth, this realm, this England’. “

I said nothing here about wife-beating, chilblains, smoking, homosexuality, hygiene, food quality or the death penalty – though most of these subjects are in fact tackled insome detail in ‘the Abolition of Britain’, which I do wish my critics would actually read, rather than thinking that they have read it when they haven’t (I can always tell).

Yet one contributor rages at me : ‘ The good old days? The police, teachers, parents, husbands, etc used to beat people up on a regular basis. Innocents hanged, I see there is still no mention of Sam Hallam. Sexual abuse in the home tolerated, "It's nothing to do with us!" Homosexuals imprisoned. Single parents, and their children, they had an older word for love child then, ostracised and made to feel ashamed. Backstreet abortions. People having to lie in court in order to get a divorce. Kids who failed the 11-plus condemned to be industry fodder.’

Let’s take this piece by piece. ‘The ‘good old days’ is his phrase, not mine. I never use it. Criminals now terrorise whole areas of our cities, unrestrained by any fear of the police. I am on record as saying that the police should be free to thump badly-behaved people within reasonable limits, because it would be simply silly to deny that this ever happened, or to deny that their authority rested to some extent on their freedom to do so. Anyone is welcome to argue about whether this is a good thing, but not by snorting away in a superior fashion about what a bad person I am for accepting this rather obvious truth. They should bear in mind that it is a choice. You can either have the police licensed to thump low-lifes, or you can have the low-lifes in charge. No utopia is available, in which the police are soppy and the bad people are well-behaved.

Teachers have ceded control of classrooms to children who refuse to listen or maintain order. Those who wish to learn are abandoned. To some extent, this is the result of the abolition of teachers’ freedom to inflict corporal punishment. There are, of course, several other reasons, but these are also connected with or national moral decline. Once again there is a choice here. Which do you want? Disorder, or the cane?

Violence and sexual abuse against children in the home, usually inflicted by step-parents is horribly common in the present day. The fate of children taken ‘into care’ is often appalling. I don’t know whether this abuse could be said to be ‘tolerated’ but it certainly happens under the modern dispensation. Whether it would be possible to quantify such abuse under the old regime and under the new, I do not know - but I am by no means sure that the ‘enlightened’ society of today would come out any better. The same is true of men beating women.

Of course wife-beating was a problem in the past. But now that we have all but abolished marriage, is such violence at an end? I rather think not. On the contrary, as Anthony Daniels has argued, in a society where fidelity is far from being the norm, jealous men are much readier to use violence to enforce it than they used to be. Given that children are so much better off in stable marriages, and that the outcome for women in this case is not that different (and may well be better for married women than unmarried ones – I await reliable facts) there isn’t even much of a dilemma.

I don’t know what the case of Sam Hallam has to do with this. There will never be a perfect world. Justice systems will always make mistakes. My own view is that they make more nowadays than they used to. The jury system has been unacceptably weakened, both by majority verdicts and by the abandoning of any qualification for jury service (this is explained at length in ‘The Abolition of Liberty’). It has also been weakened by fake conservative Home Secretaries such as Michael Howard, who abolished the right to silence, and by the post-Macpherson frenzy, when the double jeopardy rule was abandoned. The presumption of innocence, once quite strong in theory and practice, has now become a very weak force in practice.

Opponents of the death penalty claim to be worried about the execution of inncoents. they aren't really. It is just a rhetorical point. Innocents die for all kinds of reasons (millions in abortions, to which the anti-execution lobby seem to have no ojection) Many innocents are murdered, far more than used to be in the days ogf the death penalty, sometimes by convicted murderers who have been released. Convicted killers go free after a few years in non-punitive prisons. Innocents are also shot by armed police. Homicide and homicidal violence (which would have resulted in hundreds of deaths a year if we still had the hospitals of 1964) have increased enormously, as has the carrying of lethal weapons by criminals.

Meanwhile, in the brave new world preferred by my critics, people are arrested and fined for expressing unfashionable opinions about homosexuality, and often face harassment at work for expressing conservative or Christian opinions, events unthinkable in 1953. By the way, I obviously need to state here, yet again, that I fully support (and am countless times on record as supporting) the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which ensured that homosexual acts between consenting adults were no longer subject to criminal prosecution. I have to say this because my opponents either have not troubled to find out my views, or hope that others will not know my real position.

My views on the revolution in the treatment of unmarried mothers are set out fully in ‘The Abolition of Britain’, along with an interesting history of how this change came about. I am happy to discuss this with anyone who is really interested, but the author of the above caricature of recent history may not be terribly interested in the facts.

Children deprived of the opportunity of selection into high-quality free state education moulder, rot and despair in bog standard comprehensive schools far worse than any Secondary Modern. The best guarantee of racial harmony is a strong fellow-feeling brought about by full integration of migrants. While disgusting racialist signs in windows have disappeared we have instead whole cities in which large numbers of citizens have no converse with those of different ethnic origins, and often do not even speak the same language. Is this progress? Or the exchange of one evil for another? I don’t like either of them. I want tightly-controlled immigration, an end to multiculturalism and strong efforts to ensure true integration. That is one lesson we can certainly learn from the past 60 years.

I also know that there was a serious increase in crime after (and as a result of) the huge social dislocation of the 1939-45 war. That was the reason for the making of the famous film ‘The Blue Lamp’ I know that there was delinquent behaviour before 1939. I don’t believe that the past was a paradise.

Here’s what I do think. That there is no reason to assume that our material advances, which are undoubted, came at the necessary and unavoidable cost of a huge moral decay. I cannot see why we could not have come to eat better, to be better housed, to be better-travelled than we were in 1953. Just because the two things happened at the same time, does not mean that one was the cause of the other. But some of our current woes can certainly be traced to the dismantling of moral barriers, against selfishness and extravagance of all kinds.

Our period of moral decline has also, as I tried to point out, been a period of economically moral decline, in which we have ceased to make what we use, and have become a debtor nation, unable to supply our own needs through our own work and skills, and living on morally dubious funny money. I think our moral, social and cultural decay has something to do with it. This interesting article by Larry Elliott in Monday’s ‘Guardian’ must be sobering for believers in ‘progress’. Read it here.

In the same paper, the fascinating obituary of the brilliant aeronautical engineer, Sir James Hamilton, here contains the following passage, discomfiting to believers in educational ‘progress’: ‘In 1973 Hamilton [who had attended a Scottish Academy (Penicuik Academy, now vanished), the north-of-the-border equivalent of a grammar school] moved to the Cabinet Office as deputy secretary, serving under prime ministers Edward Heath and Harold Wilson. From 1976 to 1983 he headed the Department of Education and Science as permanent secretary. Both during this period and later in the Margaret Thatcher years, he became seriously concerned at what he termed "extremely mediocre" education standards in science and engineering at some universities and technical colleges.’

A couple of other points. The petulant ire of tobacco smokers against attempts to discourage their smelly and dangerous habit sometimes leads them into hysteria, and so into laughable category errors. Banning smoking from pubs really isn’t the equivalent of Stalin’s 1937 purge, or even remotely comparable with anything the KGB ever did. The freedom to damage your own health, and to bereave and profoundly distress your close family in a long-drawn-out and painful way, is also not comparable to the freedoms of speech, thought and assembly, which are precious national possessions.

Another misunderstanding comes from someone who suspects that the centralised NCA may be re effective against cannabis than our decentralised police forces. It is not a lack of manpower or organisation that is behind the British state’s failure to interdict drug possession. It is a deliberate lack of will. There is absolutely no reason to suppose, in any case, that nationalised law enforcement would be any more efficient or effective than non-nationalised law-enforcement.

I am wary of comparisons between this country and Asian countries which have ferocious laws against drug smuggling. I know little of these societies or their laws, suspect that drug abuse is widespread in them, and think the death penalty should be reserved for heinous murder and possibly treason, and then only in countries with the presumption of innocence, proper (unanimous verdict) jury trial and a free press. I am also very much against the detention of prisoners, whether convicted or unconvicted, in squalid, ill-supervised and overcrowded conditions.

Maybe later in the week I might discuss the claims of ‘Republicanism’ versus ‘Monarchy’ , and of course of that strange form of delusion known as ‘democracy’, under which people repeatedly vote for their own cynical subjugation by organised gangs of habitual fraudsters, and pretend they can choose their government.

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"But WHY do they choose to do it? Are you suggesting that poor people are inherently evil? Why them and not me or you?"

I said nothing about poor people. I spoke only of badly behaved people. The ones who rob and knife and beat their fellows. Those people are most certainly evil. That's why they do evil things. Their poverty is of no relevance, except to those who seek to make excuses for their behavior. Why do they do evil things? I don't know. I don't care. Ask them. Ask the lowlife who beat your son. Why do you and I not do such things? Presumably b/c we are not evil, although I have to qualify that by saying that making excuses for these criminals is a kind of evil too, and helps perpetuate their bad behavior.

"Please note that saying something is hogwash or pathetic does not amount to an argument."

@ Joshua Wooderson - I think that no matter how this policy was implemented, there'd be an increase in bureaucracy. However, that's not why I'm against it, and I admit that on its own wouldn't be a good enough reason not implement your policy. Although, it'd be another addition to the "arguments against" list, in my view. I think you'll find you're wrong on pepper spray. And tasers are illegal, too.

beatpoet – I admit that I’m not sure exactly how it would work in practice, but I see no reason why the responsibility of training people and issuing licenses couldn’t be contracted out to private companies operating under government guidelines.

In the US, licenses are generally issued by states, and I think, if it were to be handled exclusively by the government, putting local authorities in charge would be preferable to a central authority. Where federal authorities are involved, however, as I understand it, registering firearms is handled by existing departments.

It certainly seems to me that police officers are armed more often than they used to be, and the Wikipedia article on police use of firearms in the UK suggests this (although it says that their use has decreased since the 1980s).

I don’t know what the legal status is of tasers. Pepper spray I’m fairly sure is legal for the general public. Whether they’d be enough to deter a determined criminal I don’t know, but I agree that it would be preferable in terms of deterrence alone not to have to resort to guns, although there is an issue of personal freedom here as well.

I certainly agree that the police are faced with difficult situations more often (although American police aren’t renowned for their discretion or compassion), but the point is that ordinary people aren’t hugely unreliable and dangerous when allowed to own weapons.

TCFKAMKB,if anyone is entitled to be short on patience and at the can't be bothered stage it's me towards you.Yet again you fail to tackle any of my points and now you claim not to understand a passage which is no more unclear than Ned Flanders is agnostic.But,okay,I'm happy to provide you with an unecessary for dummies recap.

I started by stating my support for Peter's view that it's unreasonable to blame the mothers in question as things stand (I suspect much to your dissapointment).I then pointed the finger of blame both at the politicians who created and support this lousy system which allows fathers to shirk their financial responsibilities,and,of course,such fathers themselves.I concluded by inviting you to do likewise and I do so again,because this is where the blame and responsibility belongs.

Dear boy,I think you also understand my comparison with so called care in the community well enough to see its relevance and validity.Ditto my mentioning of the public smoking ban as an example of how quickly behaviour can change for the better when Joe Soap realises that H.M.Govt. isn't messing about.

So you accept that the current situation isn't ideal.So what.You'd sooner pick holes in a sensible and humane plan to rectify it than advocate using said plan to grasp this nettle while there's still time,and money,to support existing claimants for a wholly decent future time period.

Doubtless you don't consider drug abuse (be the subsatance in question legal or officially illegal) to be a good thing either.Yet you'd rather go on flogging the corpse of the 'Peter is a heavy drinking hypocrite' horse and call for him to be jailed on the basis of cannabis smoking,from donkey's years ago,he has admitted to AND regretted than get behind his proposals here.

Libertarian, I appreciate your measured response.
I don't claim to occupy the moral high ground simply because I'm aware that I don't.
I'm aware that my solutions would be a terrifying prospect should they be implemented but I see a society where criminals are no longer afraid of the law & innocents it seems are seen as a mere nuisance. My views are quite simply born of frustration.

As for your question concerning your despicable crime, I would say that the latter of your suggestions is the more realistic given the current nature of our liberal justice system.
You would in all probability have it explained to you by your vast support network of social workers & outreach coordinators that YOU'RE the victim, that society is to blame for your totally understandable crime.
It's clearly not your fault that you grew up not having the latest pair of trainers or that you may have been smacked by your father when you were young.

You see, you said that you'd EXPECT to be punished & in my mind that makes you more moral than the army of apologists prepared to justify your actions.

Speaking as someone who attended a Scottish Academy, I would concur that the 'old' world lingered on north of the border until the early 80s. Call it a coincidence, for I am no homophobe, but homosexuality was still banned in Scotland until the passage of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1980. This is often forgotten when the 1967 Act is mentioned - and of course Northern Ireland and the military followed later.

In 1982, the tawse, the preferred method of corporal punishment, was also removed from schools. Drug abuse also soared during this time. When I talk to some of my former teachers, now in their dotage - they also cite this period as the point when standards started to slip, not collapse, but start an inexorable downward path. Academies still exist in name but the 'control' examination - the Scottish 11 plus is no more. Scottish schools used the exam as a basis to stream kids from an early age effectively creating schools within schools, I am not sure what happens nowadays.

Perhaps more importantly, the decline of heavy industry in the 1980s did far more to tear apart the social fabric of Scotland and its complex fabric of working class hierarchies in the trades and in union membership. I am not debating the rights and wrongs of the Thatcher economic reforms, just stating a fact.

The police officers I knew professionally at that time, still wore tunics on the beat and had 'old world' attitudes in their approach to 'banging up neds' - from what I understand they still take a harder line but have a more robust legal system to support them. I may be wrong, I would like to hope not.

Scotland has always been a socially conservative country with a strong socialist conscience. Its politics owing nothing to the Islington New Labour variety.

@ Joshua Wooderson - thanks for the clarification. I'm glad you recognise that if citizens were more or less routinely armed, the police would have to be too. It's also good that you recognise more regular checks would be required in the event of an armed citizenry. I'd point out that this would be a costly administrative exercise - it'd undoubtedly result in a growth in police firearms licencing departments. Perhaps it'd even spawn a large government department of its own. A fairly un-libertarian aspect to a libertarian policy!

I'm not in favour of the police being routinely armed, by the way, but I'm not in favour of your "allowing the people to be armed" idea, either. I don't really see that we're moving towards routinely arming the police. I'm not sure what you base this on.

I'd have thought that if you wanted to see people being allowed to routinely carry firearms, then you might start with tasers and pepper sprays and other less lethal options, and see how that pans out before you implement something as drastic as allowing people to walk around with handguns, etc.

Final point about your claim that statistics (from the U.S., I think you said) show that armed citizens make less mistakes than armed police. I don't know your source for this, or how these stats are compiled but what immediately springs to my mind is that the police are more likely to be faced with situations where the use of a firearm would be used. Therefore, the chances of a mistake being made would be higher. I'd imagine your average U.S. cop has occasion to draw, and use, his firearm more often than the average U.S. citizen. It stands to reason that statistically, it's more likely he'll get wrong. If you see what I mean.

Ian Vallance - 'Maybe a widely armed as well as trained population could certainly make it more difficult for a totalitarian regime to control its population?'

Absolutely, and I believe that was part of the rationale behind the Second Amendment in the US. The incident you mention, if true, is an interesting example of this. Obviously I don't think we've quite got to the stage of needing an armed uprising, but Jefferson was, I believe, right about the price of freedom.

As this debate is somewhat academic, and the sun has come out after two days of solid rain, I think I will resort to the idea of 'being better employed mowing the lawn than formulating objections to proposals for an unattainable wonderland'!

A cracking line, and one I never thought I'd roll out the day after I read it...

Steve,You are quite right about that German city.whenever i return back to Britain now from abroad,i feel that Britain has fallen behind the rest of the world in terms of clean public areas and order on the streets.you will not find too many countries either that tolerate the kind of drunkeness and loutish behaviour seen in British cites at the weekends.

Violence is almost always a two way street, if I hit you I shouldnt I perhaps expect that you might want to hit me back? So what?
My point was that the violence in France was inspired by religion(S) are you saying it wasnt?

I further contend that this kind of inter religion/denominational violence is utterly inevitable and nothing about the religions themselves remotely attempts to prevent it indeed the very nature of their claims and stated beliefs is effectively what makes it inevitable.

Surely the Edit of Nante (Like the Gerry Mandering in pre 70's Ulster) which sought to place restrictions of the religious beliefs and rights of those holding them of some of Frances population, itself wasnt necessary or just?
It simply created a recipe for on-going discontent and then of course its revocation lead to massacres and mass expulsions etc?
And please dont appeal to the different age argument, as it clashes with the universal timeless moral values argument which I also find tiresome.
Oh and I very rarely (and never intentionally) directly abuse individuals I attack tired, usually unsubstantiated and clearly indefensible, ludicrous announcements & assumptions that religion and particularly the Christian religion in any or all of its fully valid denominations is some kind of moral break on human behaviour. Or more accurately that it is somehow intrinsically better or more valid than any other attempts to control human behaviour. To claim it is, is to ignore virtually all of its history.

And I will remind you I have never, and never will say that religion doesnt and cant affect the behaviour of individuals in a positive way but I cannot and will not stand by and let people bleat on about how returning our society to its control would somehow in itself make it a better because for me is this purest guff of the first order.
Also I have no objection to folk believing anything but trying to pretend that our society being more under "religions" sway WILL make us "better" just doesnt ring remotely true. Could it? Of course it could but you could equally argue if we all accepted Marxism and its tenants on each according to their needs etc life would be hunk dory, This is of course BS because it aint going to happen such fantasists dogmatic idealism is always (thankfully) defeated by the reality of human behaviour. Fact is religion like marxism is just another human construct and therefore of course subject to all their limitations. there is nothing special about religions is my view.
We live in an imperfect world, but a brief trip through our history surely suggests the last thing we should do is to look to try and "make it" perfect.
On governance my primary view is avoid any and all dogma(s)

I don't believe that retribution should be the 'only tool in the kit' as you put it. As it happens, I myself react much more positively when given a 'carrot' instead of a 'stick' to any given situation. But then I'm not a violent criminal!
It's just that I feel that the law is far too lenient when dealing with thugs whos actions disrupt innocent peoples lives.
As I recently remarked to Dermot Doyle, I'm sick to the back teeth of reading about scumbags - some of them violent scumbags - yawning & laughing their way through court proceedings & showing a total contempt for the law & to the victims of their behavior. They need to experience fear of their own to understand the result of their own selfish actions.

Regarding your comments about sink estates, I would initially agree that these soulless projects do seem to harbour more that a fair share of 'problem families' - although it must be pointed out that not everyone with the misfortune to live on one or in a high-rise block are criminal scumbags. Just as not everyone living in leafy suburbia are respectable, white & middle-class.
For instance I had four cousins grow up on the notorious (& now demolished) Chingford Hall estate in east London back in the late 70s/early 80s & all grew up to be polite & well mannered individuals. The reason for this, I believe, is because they were all taught the difference between right & wrong. They were all taught to stay out of trouble & to respect their elders.

I think that Ian Vallance makes a valid point when he mentions that it's not necessarily the surroundings that is the problem, it's the tolerance & lack of punishment towards antisocial & criminal behaviour.
It is this that urgently needs addressing.

Ian Vallance, you tend to engage in vitriolic abuse of those who defend religion but you never explain where your own ideas of right and wrong come from or why you believe other people should be obliged to share them. In this you have a lot in common with Dawkins, Fry, Grayling & Co. And by the way, as I have noted before in exchanges between us, Catholic - Huguenot violence in France was very much a two way street.

Had I been in your position Christopher, I'm afraid a belated apology at the suggestion of some soppy social worker would be of no use to me whatsoever. I'm interested only in justice in the guises of punishment, revenge or retribution. I want lowlife scum to feel fear & pain. Emotions that are simply alien to them at this present time.

Posted by: Avid fan. | 07 June 2012 at 08:38 AM

You want 'low life scum to feel fear and pain'. Is this something you think about often? Who would inflict this 'fear and pain' on 'low life scum'? You?

I have a proposition for you: according the some (usually) right wing 'public intellectuals' I as someone who has a severe and enduring mental illness am one of the 'low life scum' you fantasise about inflicting fear and pain on. Would you wish to inflict 'fear and pain' upon me? Well, name the place and time. I promise you though that I'm no masochistic and I will give as good as I get.

beatpoet – Perhaps I should clarify. I’m wary of having a police force that’s routinely armed while ordinary citizens are not. Obviously if citizens were allowed to carry firearms, the police would have to be at least as well armed so as to be able to defend themselves, and present a threat to criminals.

You could object, of course, that this is counter-productive if the aim is to have a police force that’s unarmed as far as possible. But we seem to be heading increasingly in the direction of an armed police force anyway, even with the gun laws as strict as they are. So I think it would make little difference in this respect.

As for licences, I suspect five years is often enough for the few groups currently permitted to own firearms – farmers and so on. If the laws were relaxed, I recognise that there’d be a need for greater safeguards.

Alan Thomas – I don’t know how experienced gun users are in states with relaxed gun law. Certainly, prior to the passage of concealed carry laws, they’d had no experience of using a weapon when confronting, say, an armed robber.

Anyhow, I see no reason to think that it would take decades to train people to use firearms responsibly. After all, every new generation has to learn from scratch, so why should the fact that America has a more deeply entrenched gun culture than we do make any difference?

You may be right that politicians would tighten the laws again at the first sign of a problem. But that’s not an objection to the policy itself, only to the reality of enacting it in today’s political climate. And since the political climate would have to be radically different for any such policy to be even conceivable, it doesn’t strike me as a particularly strong objection.

Posted by: Joshua Wooderson | 07 June 2012 at 12:18 PM
Interestingly perhaps on potentially armed and trained citizenry some (left wing?) historians I think argue that only the fact that apparently very large numbers of trained battle hardened service men (both still in, so still armed, as well as recently demobed) voted for the 45 labour landslide, prevented "the establishment" from acting to stop Attlee taking power as they saw the labour win as a communist threat. The military brass apparently genuinely feared a civil war if they tried to intervene. This could be utter BS I read it on the internet I think.
But of course the Swiss actually expect all able bodied males to be reservists and to keep a fully functional assault rifle and ammunition at home, as well as go along for target practice annually I believe. I have no idea if they have some sort of sanity checks on the able bodied gun holders.

Maybe a widely armed as well as trained population could certainly make it more difficult for a totalitarian regime to control its population?
But then again the Soviet Union had national service so they had a militarily aware and weapons trained population but then I guess getting a weapon on the streets of Moscow back in the USSR days might not have been that easy. Of course now its dawdle and you probably get free fragmentation grenades with every purchase if you buy the “meal deal” or go large.

'A highly novel idea to you,I'd imagine,but I advise you to think it over anyway.'

I honestly have no idea what you mean by that.

You then write:

'...or do you regard that action as some sort of kind and fair success story?'

I have very little knowledge about the care in the community, and have no wish to entertain your comparison with assisting single mothers because I have never said that the situation with single mothers is ideal.

You then write:

'The current situation is netiher ideal nor financially sustainable in the long term.Doing nothing is an option,but not a good,realistic or humane one.As I strongly suspect you realise deep down,hence this variant on the half bottle of wine card you're playing against me.'

Find a quote of mine in which I say that the current situation with single mothers in this country is fine and that we don't need to do anying - otherwise I can't be bothered dealing with you.

Avid Fan and Christopher Charles - an interesting exchange about crime and (non?) punishment. I suggest a compromise - restorative justice ‘Iranian style’! No Orwellian spin over there, an eye for an eye, and absolutely no letter writing or cringe-worthy apology. I admit that ‘restorative justice’ doesn’t make any sense to me - although too be honest, an eye for an eye would be just as foreign for me also. But in terms of ‘restorative justice’, I think its so called success rate is dependant on self-selecting individuals who wouldn’t be going on to commit more crimes in any case. Similar to the prison inmate who takes up education in prison - its not the education project that is responsible for ‘turning’ the criminal into a ‘normal’ citizen. Rather, it is simply the 2nd chance that they have been given, and which I’m all in favour of. However, It’s the 3rd/4th and ….chances where I draw the line.

A question. If I committed a despicable crime, I would expect to be punished harshly. Does that mean that as an individual I am somehow less moral because I am perhaps admitting that I ‘must’ be ‘bullied’ into behaving correctly? Or does it mean that I am more moral than the gullible sentimentalists/criminal apologist types among us who appear to have a very soft focus on the world around us. However, they do seem to have a very impressive 20/20 vision of the future where our world will be so much better, and crime free, once we have a fair economic system in place. Personally, I would agree with them about the virtues of an equitable economic system, but in the mean time I don’t wish to be offered-up like some form of sacrifice to their curious rose-tinted god.

Refreshingly, neither of you were claiming the moral high ground on this subject (no forced trek to Mount Moriah at least!). Morality is a very complex subject, and as we are all meant to view one another as equals, perhaps the surest path is to reject the subjective and instead accept the view of the neurologist - they consider the whole concept of human morality as merely a way for our human brain to be able to process and rationalise what is fundamentally just a set of irrational emotions.

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